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Child

UNICEF and Diplo publish report on child safety in the metaverse

Experts from UNICEF Innocenti, the research and analysis arm of UNICEF, and Diplo have come together to publish the report Rapid Analysis: Metaverse, XR, and Children.

The report examines the potential opportunities and risks associated with emerging technologies, particularly the metaverse and extended reality (XR), and their impact on children’s rights and well-being.

The report presents a comprehensive analysis of the metaverse, XR, and their implications for children. It provides valuable insights into the potential benefits of these technologies, such as enhanced education, creativity, and social interaction. However, it also highlights the risks, including privacy concerns, exacerbation of the digital divide, and potential impact on mental health.

Key findings from the report include:

Enhanced Learning: The metaverse and XR have the potential to revolutionise education, providing immersive and interactive learning experiences that cater to individual needs and promote engagement.
Creative Expression: Children can explore and express their creativity through the metaverse and XR platforms, allowing them to build, design, and collaborate on innovative projects.
Social Interaction: These technologies offer opportunities for children to connect with peers, mentors, and experts from diverse backgrounds, fostering social inclusion and cultural exchange.
Privacy Concerns: The report highlights the need for robust safeguards to protect children’s personal information in the metaverse and XR environments, ensuring their digital rights are respected.
Digital Divide: Access to the metaverse and XR technologies can exacerbate existing inequalities, necessitating targeted efforts to bridge the digital divide and ensure equitable access for all children, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds.
Mental Health Considerations: Excessive screen time, virtual isolation, and potential addictive features in the metaverse and XR platforms require proactive measures to protect children’s mental health and well-being.

In this report, UNICEF Innocenti and Diplo Innocenti call upon governments, technology companies, educators, parents, and civil society organisations to collaborate in ensuring that the potential benefits of the metaverse and XR technologies are maximised while minimising risks for children. The report recommends comprehensive policies and regulations, investment in digital literacy programs, and ethical guidelines to protect children’s rights and foster responsible use of these technologies.

The Metaverse, Extended Reality and Children

Rapid analysis | How might virtual environments evolve? And how are they likely to impact children and young adults?

Highlights

Tens of millions of children and young people are already active in virtual environments and game spaces. While it remains to be seen whether the metaverse is the future or just hype, their potentially profound impact on children and youth makes it essential to engage with these technologies today.

This report considers both positive and negative effects that virtual environments could have on children; the drivers of and predictions for the growth of the metaverse; and the regulatory and policy challenges posed by the metaverse. The report also recommends actions for government and private sector stakeholders to take in order to empower children and protect against or mitigate potential harms.

Broad recommendations for government stakeholders, including policymakers and regulators:

Assess and adjust, if needed, regulations and regulatory frameworks to ensure that metaverse-related technologies do not violate children’s rights.
Foster an enabling environment to maximize the benefits of metaverse-related technologies and virtual environments for all children through promoting inclusion, child rights design and research.

Broad recommendations for technology companies providing metaverse-related products and services:

Prioritize the best interests of the child in the development and implementation of metaverse-related technologies.
Internally and with other industry stakeholders, civil society groups, researchers and regulators, work to protect children and address harmful content and behaviour in the metaverse.

Quelle:

https://www.diplomacy.edu/press-release/unicef-and-diplo-publish-report-on-child-safety-in-the-metaverse/

https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/reports/metaverse-extended-reality-and-children

16. Juni 2023 0 comment

Examples

How One Hospital Is Using An AR Bear To Calm Young Patients

MRI scans, while safe, can prove especially traumatizing for younger patients.

Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOCK), a children’s hospital located in Orange County, California, has transformed its lovable mascot ‘Choco’ into an AR (augmented reality) experience that walks children through the steps of a standard MRI scan. The idea is that by familiarizing younger patients with the process, they’ll feel more comfortable during the actual procedure.

For those unfamiliar, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is a technique used by radiologists to capture images of a person’s anatomy. MRI scans, while harmless, involve sitting in a loud metal tube and can sometimes take hours to complete. As a result, many tend to find the process uncomfortable. This is especially true for younger patients.

First spotted by The Orange County Register, MRI with Choco aims to provide a more comfortable experience for child patients by allowing them to explore a radiology lobby alongside an adorable AR bear named Choco. Voiced by a former CHOC patient, Choco provides valuable information designed to help ease the child into the process. Children are even introduced to the members of the radiology staff.

Using an iPad encased in a child-friendly cover, children explore the room to discover new AR content triggered by various real-world elements. Aim the tablet at the mural located on the ceiling, for instance, and patients can watch a virtual baby whale come to life in the real world. When it’s time to switch rooms, patients point their tablets at a seagull marker on the wall to unlock a series of digital footprints leading to the prep room. Here Choco shows off the gown they’ll wear during the test.

“We thought, ‘Let’s dream up something entirely new for our patients and families,’” said Debra Beauregard, part of CHOC’s MI3 leadership team, in an official release. “Our MRI team shared a problem they were having, and together, we came up with an innovative solution.”

“We have children that come through here who are on a lot of different types of medical journeys, and oftentimes, this can be one of the more overwhelming experiences for patients and their families,” added Ashley McGee, a child life specialist and member of the MRI with Choco team. “This app will help reduce stress and anxiety, and also help to promote positive coping skills and help normalize the environment.”

MRI with Choco is still in its pilot stage, though a public release is expected soon. The company is also working on a parent module that will answer frequently asked questions. For more information visit here.

Quelle:

How One Hospital Is Using An AR Bear To Calm Young Patients

Image Credit: CHOC

8. April 2022 0 comment

Examples

Pokémon Smile: AR hilft beim Zähneputzen

Mit «Pokémon Smile» hat The Pokémon Company eine kostenlose AR-App für iOS und Android veröffentlicht, in der es darum geht, Kinder für das tägliche Zähneputzen zu motivieren, natürlich auf spielerische Art und Weise.

«Pokémon Smile» verwendet die Kamera des Mobilgeräts, um die Bewegungen des Kindes beim Zähneputzen zu erfassen. Wenn das Kind die Zähne gründlich putzt, kann es die Karies verursachenden Bakterien besiegen und anschliessend Pokémon fangen. Dabei wird geholfen, alle Bereiche des Mundes zu putzen. Insgesamt können über 100 Pokémon-Arten gefangen werden und der Trailer liefert Eindrücke.

Eltern können einstellen, bis zu drei Mal täglich eine Benachrichtigung von «Pokémon Smile» zu erhalten, die daran erinnert, dass es für die Kinder Zeit zum Zähneputzen ist. Zudem kann auch die Dauer jedes Zahnputzvorgangs auf eine bis drei Minuten eingestellt werden, um den verschiedenen Bedürfnissen von Kindern unterschiedlichen Alters gerecht zu werden.

Quelle:

Pressemeldung

Pokémon Smile: AR hilft beim Zähneputzen

30. Juni 2020 0 comment

Examples

VR Lets Social Workers Experience Child Abuse

Virtual reality technology which allows social workers to experience abuse through a child’s eyes is set to be used to cut knife and gang crime following a successful pilot.

The pioneering technology, which is being used by more than 30 local authorities and organisations to give social workers, teachers and district judges a better understanding of the needs of children in care, will be developed to help troubled youngsters following a spate of fatal stabbings.

Cornerstone, the company which pioneers the cutting-edge technology, is in talks with London boroughs to see if it can prevent children being unwittingly exploited by gangs – and even help to de-radicalise Muslim teenagers.

It comes after the programme, the first of its kind in the world which sees social workers wear headsets to experience abuse and neglect from a child’s perspective – was hailed “revolutionary” by the head of the Children and Family Court Advisory Service (CAFCASS), which represents children in care.

Anthony Douglas said: “Foster carers, adoptive carers and parents can understand the impact of major family issues like neglect and domestic abuse much quicker and in a much deeper way through being immersed in a VR experience, than is possible through conventional learning programmes. I strongly believe that VR can have as similar positive impact on many of the social issues we face in Britain today.”

Cornerstone’s CEO Helen Costa said: “We have been talking to those Councils most affected by violent youth crime, such as Lambeth who are willing to look outside the box to see how we can apply what we’ve achieved in children social care to the escalating issues of knife crime and youth crime and that’s our next massive challenge.

“A young person is going to interact with a VR experience much more readily than they will sit down with a police officer for a cup of tea. When it comes to child sexual exploitation, county lines and gang culture – kids are roped in unwittingly at first. We think harnessing the power of virtual reality to both engage and challenge kids’ perspectives will help them to make better life choices, and as the leaders in VR based behaviour change, we are well placed to take on such an ambitious but worthwhile project.”

Cornerstone has pioneered the cutting-edge technology

The current VR programme contains 12 episodes which give a visceral insight into the effect of abuse and neglect on children from when they are in the womb to in their late teens.

The harrowing footage – see from the child’s perspective – shows a baby being shouted at in its cot, a toddler being neglected – and then explores the impact on the child’s behaviour at school.

A hundred per cent of child care professionals who have used the programme since it was launched in February 2017 said they would recommend it.

Mr Douglas has claimed that the day-long VR based training session can achieve as much as months of conventional intermittent training involving interviews and role playing sessions.

Ms Costa, who has two adopted children, said the response from those who have used the VR technology was “overwhelmingly positive”.

“Ninety per cent of social workers who used it said they would do something differently as a result, 88 per cent of district judges agreed and so did 91 per cent of teachers. The immerse VR experience has a proven track record of increasing empathy and producing better outcomes for children in care.

“We have managed to shrink down the typical two to three years of traditional experiential learning to prepare people to foster, adopt or work with children into a matter of days.”

The programme has been used with over 500 individuals including professionals, adopters, foster carers and special guardians and across all types of placements the technology has supported a change in family dynamics to enable children to stay put when the placement was likely to have broken down.

“We’ve worked with many families who are still together as a result,” said Ms Costa.

“What I’d like now is work with the best game makers in the world to develop this technology for use by the youngsters themselves and turn it into an intervention that will turn lives around. Let’s use technology for better outcomes for our children.”

Quelle:

Foto: Social workers wear headsets to experience abuse and neglect from a child’s perspective

https://vrroom.buzz/vr-news/trends/vr-lets-social-workers-experience-child-abuse

28. Februar 2019 0 comment

Examples

Live The Life Of A Child With Hearing Loss In VR

YOUTUBE: The 360-degree VR experience replicates what life is like for a child with hearing loss.

For anybody with hearing loss, articulating the isolation it causes is almost impossible.

For a child, it’s even harder.

But a new virtual reality (VR) experience, designed to immerse users in a playground and classroom as a child with hearing loss, is helping to foster empathy in parents, teachers and other students.

„They didn’t think I could hear so little,“ eight-year-old Tyler Potaka said of his peers.

Tyler has bilateral mild to moderate hearing loss, meaning he has hearing loss in both ears.

For his mother Philippa, the experience wasn’t quite so matter-of-fact.

„It was very emotional to put your mind and your head and your body and transplant into your own child and to experience what they see and hear, or don’t hear.

„You really are able to have more empathy, you’re able to sympathise with not being able to hear.“

Isolated and vulnerable

The VR project was launched by Sydney charity The Shepherd Centre and filmed at a Newtown primary school.

„We decided we should do it from the perspective of a child … in the classroom and in the playground and do a comparison as to what it would be like with [hearing aids] and without.“

Nick Hunter, the creative director from innovation company Paper Moose which led the design, said the VR team worked with audiology specialists to accurately recreate how hearing loss sounds.

„You start in the playground and the audio is quite muffled,“ he said.

„I was really surprised when we were talking to the specialists and we did our first pass at what we thought would be moderate hearing loss, and the expert said, ‚No, you need to go further — it’s much more degraded than that.“

After experiencing the muffled audio in the playground, the user is moved to the classroom where the teacher asks you a question but you’re unable to understand.

„When the whole experience was finished, and we sat down and watched it in its entirety, I found it surprisingly emotional at how isolated and vulnerable I felt,“ Mr Hunter said.

Early intervention important

Dr Anne Fulcher, principal listening and spoken word specialist at the Shepherd Centre, said she believed the technology was so powerful that it could lead to better clinical outcomes.

„It’s wonderful to help new parents to see the impact of hearing loss and why it’s so important to help them with amplification and early intervention as soon as possible,“ Dr Fulcher said.

And the benefit came from empathy, which would encourage parents and carers to intervene earlier, she said.

„A lot of the families say they don’t want their children to wear devices because it makes them look different and the kids will bully them.

„Often our reply is, ‚Well, if they don’t have hearing aids, that’s setting them up for being bullied because they will sound different, they will act different, they won’t be a part of the groups because it will be too difficult, their speech and language will be delayed; so it’s setting them up for all types of social and long-term poor outcomes‘.“

While the technology is offered at The Shepherd Centre, Dr Fulcher said the team would work towards sharing it with schools and government bodies.

Quelle:

https://vrroom.buzz/vr-news/entertainment/live-life-child-hearing-loss-vr

21. Oktober 2018 0 comment